Victims of Happenstance
by owlcroft
Summary: Another vignette on the patio, I'm afraid. Out of the 142 stories I've written in this fandom, I swear at least a dozen are vignettes on the patio!


Victims of Happenstance

by

Owlcroft

"So how come I'm always the victim?" McCormick scowled at the man across the patio table. "How come I'm always the one getting shot and beat up and stabbed and run over and gored by a bull -"

"Gored by a bull?" Hardcastle interrupted. "You've never been gored by a bull!" He rustled his newspaper irritably. "Gored by a bull," he muttered.

McCormick shrugged. "Okay, that one never happened. But what do you bet it will now? By tomorrow morning, probably. Somebody will think to themselves, 'Hey! Here's a new way to hurt poor old Markie! I'll have a bull break through the hedge and get him while he's mowing the lawn!'"

The judge lowered his sports section and looked across the table with a combination of disbelief and amusement. "C'mon. Nobody's gonna have a bull run amok here in Malibu. Get a grip on yourself, McCormick."

"And that's another thing! Why are you always the old voice of wisdom, the mature one, the guy with the answers, and I get stuck being weepy or guilty or stupid – when I'm not in the emergency room!" Mark leaned back in his chair and snorted in irritation.

"I dunno. Maybe they're trying to copy the actual episodes." Hardcastle cocked his head in thought. "You were shot a coupla times, and then there was the Ravine of Death."

"Yeah, but you were shot, too! At least twice -" Mark trailed off and wrinkled his brow in concentration. "Maybe that was it, just twice."

"Hmm." Another brow wrinkled for a moment. "But one of those was in the heart. You never got shot in the _heart_."

Both men thought for a few seconds, then McCormick returned to the main point of his discontent. "Okay, some of the episodes had us getting shot or smacked around. And there was that one hospital scene when you'd been 'shot in the _heart_ '. But that was once in a while – in fanfic, it's always happening. And it's almost always _me_. Or I'm sobbing my guts out because it's my mother's birthday again or you've got a hangnail or the pizza had salami instead of pepperoni -"

"Hey, you've got the easy part! I've gotta come in and be all comforting and reassuring and all."

"But see, that's my point. You're the old geezer with the answers and I'm the kid with emotional problems. Or sixteen broken bones and four simultaneous concussions." Mark brooded. "It's not fair. Besides all that, why do they do it? It's not like they're making a profit off us."

The judge shrugged. "We were pretty popular characters for a few years. And a male pairing always seems to attract fic writers. Look at Starsky and Hutch, look at Sherlock and John -"

"Look at the Lone Ranger and Tonto," said McCormick _sotto voce_.

The judge stared at him in surprise. "Really?"

"Nah, I was just yanking your chain. But honest, Judge, it's annoying the hell out of me. I know, I know-" he raised a hand as Hardcastle opened his mouth to respond – "just don't read the stuff. But it's sitting right there in front of me every day. I mean, it's _me_. Or it's _supposed_ to be. How do I just ignore all that anguish and pain and all the other overdone emotions?"

"Just get over it, I guess." Hardcastle passed a hand over his face, then sat and mused, gazing out over the ocean. "I know, that's easy to say. But look at it this way. Whoever writes that stuff must have some kinda need to write it, maybe some sorta psychological hoo-ha going on. And if it helps them with that, then that's a good thing, right? And it doesn't really affect us, I mean, not really. The DVDs are still the go-to source and they established our characters pretty distinctly, I'd say. So what, if a buncha people want to see us different? Remember that one that made you a werewolf?"

"I was a vampire," Mark corrected. "And then you were, too." He grinned suddenly. "That one was kinda fun, actually. You know, with the inside jokes and all."

"Okay, so look at it as, I dunno . . . an act of charity maybe. We give up a little of our reality so somebody can deal with their own. Does that make any sense?" The judge shook his head, then sat in thought.

McCormick leaned forward and rested his arms on the glass-topped table. "But it's not _us_ , and if we give up our 'reality' like that, what happens to us? I mean, look, we're fictional characters as it is. If we allow ourselves to become other people with the same names, doesn't that take away our reality completely?" He rested his head on his arms. "I'm getting a headache."

"You _are_ a headache," groused Hardcastle. "Here I was, reading the paper and thinking about another cup of coffee when you started all this fanfic stuff."

"I got it!" said McCormick suddenly, lifting his head and flashing the grin that launched a thousand fics. "No, really," he insisted as the older man gave him a skeptical glance. "They're _not_ us. They're our evil twins! Or," he pondered, "our sappy twins. Our angsty twins."

"Now, don't start that again. We already had that bunch all over us for mis-using 'angst'. They were scary, too." The judge rested his head on his hand and half-closed his eyes. "But I think I like it. Maybe our _emotional_ twins. Not us at all, or maybe some kind parallel universe kind of thing."

"See! That's my point exactly," said Mark in triumph. "It's already affecting us if you can start talking about parallel universes. You'd _never_ do that in an episode! We've got to draw a line in the sand here or we're going to fade right into the sappy twins."

"Okay, so we got us some twins. But let's stick with 'emotional', okay? It's less denigratory and they did used to be us." Hardcastle nodded slowly. "Yeah, that'll work. I like it."

McCormick nodded back at him. "So _we_ stick to chasing bad guys, some vignettes, and the occasional self-referential chat on the patio while _they_ handle the soapy stuff."

"That's a deal." The judge smacked the table with a hand. "Now, can I finish the damned paper?"

 _finis_

A/N: References are made herein to previous stories, "Related by Blood" and "MAUSE". Shameless self-promotion, but some might be curious.


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